This Treasure Was Terrifyingly Powerful

Luna Village was small, so Pan Long soon reached the Moon Goddess statue.

Because of the One God Religion missionary's interruption, the festival had ended early. The villagers had already left, and only the Moon Goddess's priestess remained.

She was the girl who looked exactly like the statue: Lily, the heroine of the game.

"Hello, adventurer," she said politely. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Pan Long looked her over. She really was beautiful, and her figure looked nothing like a fourteen-year-old's. The priestess robes should have looked dignified, but on her they made her look like a woman using cosplay as a cover for some shady trade.

That fat duck who's illustrated every Heroes' Tale game may be the king of missed deadlines, but damn, he can draw. No wonder the boss of Luna Company rants about that lazy bastard on Weibo every day, then still has to offer him actual company shares to renew his contract...

Of course, however gorgeous Lilina was, she had nothing to do with him—at least not now.

She was only fourteen! Even women in the Northlands didn't marry until they were fifteen or sixteen!

What interested him was the secret treasure that might be hidden here.

"This statue... I mean, the Hua around it. Can I look for something in there?" he asked.

Lilina paused, then asked in confusion, "Is there something in the flowers?"

"You know, I'm an explorer..."

That wildly unconvincing excuse somehow fooled the innocent girl. After thinking it over, she took two steps back to give him room.

"Please don't touch the statue," she reminded him.

She's so easy to fool. Everyone who said she was all bust and no brains wasn't wrong!

Maybe only someone this innocent could serve as a vessel for the Moon Goddess's divine power?

Pan Long nodded, bent down, and slipped into the Hua.

The Hua grew fairly tall, making it hard to search among them. Cutting them down might have made things easier, but he obviously couldn't do that.

So he searched patiently, refusing to miss the slightest spiderweb thread or horse track.

After four or five minutes of rummaging, he finally found what he was looking for.

A palm-sized statue with a metallic sheen lay quietly among the leaves deep in the Hua.

That's it!

He hurriedly picked it up. Sure enough, it was astonishingly heavy—over fifty jin, most likely. If he hadn't been so skilled in martial arts, an ordinary strong man might not have managed to lift it with both hands. He would have dropped it and crushed his own foot.

Pan Long wiped it off and compared it with the stone statue before him, which stood about one and a half times a person's height. They were identical.

Lilina was stunned to see him find a tiny Moon Goddess statue in the flowers before the larger one. She couldn't help coming closer, looking from the statue in Pan Long's hands to the stone statue ahead. Her eyes widened with curiosity.

"Did someone lose this?" she asked.

"What do you think?" Pan Long asked back.

Lily thought for a moment, then shook her head. She had been a priestess for years and had never seen anyone make a copy of the statue.

The Moon Goddess's faith didn't require worship several times a day. Paying respects on holidays was enough. There were already two statues in the village, so why would anyone need another?

"Then... where did this little statue come from?" she asked, still curious.

Pan Long smiled but didn't answer.

He hadn't held out much hope of finding it—the equipment clearly went a little beyond the game. But now that he had found it, he hadn't yet figured out how to explain it.

"How strange! Even if someone copied the statue, why hide it in the Hua? Does that mean something?" Lily murmured to herself. "Why put a statue in front of a statue?"

She kept tilting her head back and forth, lost in thought.

With the treasure in hand, Pan Long was in excellent spirits. Before long, he came up with an explanation. "You know I'm an explorer. I specialize in finding treasure and mineral deposits. A while ago, I had someone tell my fortune. They said I'd find a treasure connected to the Moon Goddess in this direction. So I set out to look for it. I've been searching for quite a few days, and now I've finally found it."

"So that's it!" Lily believed him at once and said happily, "I never thought someone from outside the village would worship the Moon Goddess!"

How did you get that from what I said?

Pan Long was the one left stunned. He had no idea how to respond.

"That person must have been very devout. He made this little statue years ago, but perhaps something happened and he couldn't take it with him, so he hid it here. Then he used fortune-telling as a pretext to send you here to find it again... Mm, what a clever man!"

Pan Long gave a couple of dry laughs, deeply impressed by the girl's ability to invent a story.

Where did any of that come from?

"Then I can take it with me?" he asked.

"Of course. It doesn't belong to our village; someone else left it here. Since the original owner asked you to find it, you can certainly take it," Lilina said. "But I hope you'll treat the statue with respect. At least have a box made for it. The craftsman in the village is very nice, and everything he makes is sturdy. You can ask him for help..."

Lily suddenly slapped her forehead. "Oh, right! You don't know where he lives, do you? I'll take you there."

Pan Long regretted opening his mouth. He should have just taken the thing and left...

Half an hour later, he had a heavy wooden box with the statue inside.

As for the craftsman who handled both carpentry and smithing, he had misjudged the statue's weight and dropped it on his foot. He had been taken to the village chief's house, where the chief applied some herbs. Those herbs were truly remarkable. His foot had swollen up like a loaf of bread, and Pan Long had even heard a bone crack when the statue landed. Yet before long, the man could already limp around.

That only strengthened Pan Long's resolve to take some herbs back with him.

They could practically heal a fracture in no time. Those herbs were miraculous!

Medicines that effective did exist in the real world, but they were so expensive that even a thousand pieces of gold might not buy them. If he could bring back a batch, the trip would have been worth it!

Besides, he had gained something else.

After dinner, with the Slayer Sword now fitted with a scabbard at his waist, he returned to his room upstairs and took the small but heavy statue out of its box.

"How am I supposed to equip this thing? Do I need to put it on a chain and hang it around my neck?"

He pictured the sight and immediately shook his head.

Impossible! Hanging fifty or sixty jin around his neck? Even if it didn't strangle him, it would wreck his cervical spine!

Then what should he do? Add a few chains to his armor and strap it on?

...How was he supposed to keep his balance like that?

"What am I supposed to do?" Pan Long muttered in frustration. "It's not like I'm playing a game. I can't just open my Character Panel, switch to the Equipment Slot, and then—"

His voice stopped dead. He stared, dumbfounded, at the transparent screen before him.

[Name: Pan Long]

[Race: Human—Northlander subspecies]

[Title: None]

[Class: None]

[Level: 0]

[Experience: 0]

[Health: 50]

[Mana: 20]

[Attack: 22/9]

[Attack type: Blunt strike ×2]

[Defense: 20/13]

[Block defense: 22]

[Accuracy: 13]

[Evasion: 14]

[Combat speed: 21]

[Critical: 13]

To the right of the text was a full-body 3D projection of him. Behind it was a seven-sided attribute chart.

The chart showed strength, constitution, mind, spirit, reflexes, perception, and luck. Of his seven attributes, only spirit, at 19, appeared on the chart. All the others were off the scale, so he couldn't read their values.

He still remembered roughly how the game calculated its stats. Working backward from his numbers, he estimated that most of his attributes were a little over 40. Spirit and luck were somewhat lower, while constitution was exceptionally high—even above 60.

Every Heroes' Tale game had a class advancement system. Generally, characters could advance three or four times. The level caps for the basic, expert, Master, and ultimate classes were all 20, meaning a character could reach level 80. A few characters also had a final hidden class, bringing their total possible level to 90—the hidden class capped at level 10.

With every advancement, the seven-sided chart on the Character Panel changed. Its upper limit increased, and the same attribute took up less space on the chart. The basic class's attribute cap was 20; the hidden class's was 100.

Pan Long estimated that, judging by his attributes, he was comparable to a Master-class character above level 40. But exactly what level? He had no idea.

"So I'm this strong!" He couldn't help laughing. "And I thought I was weak."

At over level 40, he could sweep through the game's first stage undefeated. All he had to do was avoid going crazy and confronting Seles, the Most Holy, one of the Empire's four legion commanders, head-on.

That strength filled him with confidence.

And judging by his Character Panel... could he also gain a class from the game? Learn skills and magic?

He tried swiping the transparent screen with a finger. Sure enough, the second page was for skills, and the third was for magic. Both were completely empty.

The fourth page was the equipment tab. It showed a simple human figure with empty slots around its body where equipment could go.

Pan Long picked up the heavy statue and tried placing it in the accessory slot.

The air rippled like water. His hand suddenly felt lighter, and the little Luna Statue vanished. In the Equipment Slot's accessory slot, however, the statue appeared.

Unlike in the game, the statue had a small line of text beneath its description: "Awaiting activation."

"Awaiting activation? What does that mean? Can I choose whether to activate it?"

Pan Long muttered to himself, then tried saying, "Activate."

At once, he felt dozens of jin of weight settle onto his body. The weight was spread across him, so it wasn't too much to bear. Still, the sensation of suddenly becoming heavier was strange.

He checked his attributes. The numbers had indeed changed. Most noticeably, his combat speed had dropped sharply, while his block defense had risen considerably.

In terms of stats, the most important part of this equipment was probably its "Weight: 50." That weight would slow him in battle but also help him block attacks. It was a double-edged sword.

"Too heavy—deactivate."

The weight vanished at once, and the small line of text reappeared on the statue in his Equipment Slot.

"This is incredible!" Pan Long couldn't resist equipping the Slayer Sword too and testing its activation.

When he activated it, the crimson sword abruptly appeared in his hand. When he deactivated it, it vanished just as abruptly, without the slightest warning either time. As the sword appeared and disappeared, his stats changed as well. The effect was immediate.

"I could use this to catch someone off guard in a fight..."

Several nasty tricks immediately came to mind. An enemy might think he was fighting barehanded, only for a flash of red light to put a sword in his hand—and a sword that dealt double damage, no less...

Just imagining it was fun!

What was more, he was currently level 0, with no class, skills, or magic. If he could accumulate experience, level up, and gain a class, skills, and even magic, wouldn't that add a huge boost to the strength he already had?

"I never imagined the Classic of Mountains and Seas Fragment had this kind of power. It made an entire game system for me out of thin air!" Even as he lay in bed to rest, Pan Long couldn't stop smiling.

"This treasure is incredible! Terrifyingly powerful—absolutely terrifying! Hahahaha!"

He had acquired a system. Unfortunately, it came with neither quests nor unlimited attribute points...

(The End)